


on all the ashes in my wake

by unexpectedchair



Series: for reasons wretched and divine [2]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, F/F, Mutual Pining, hey you know whats gay? fire, philosophical conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:35:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25189540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unexpectedchair/pseuds/unexpectedchair
Summary: Ainsel and Istus fall into one of their usual conversations, and find the fire consumes them both.
Relationships: Ainsel/Istus
Series: for reasons wretched and divine [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824760





	on all the ashes in my wake

**Author's Note:**

> i was listening to brodyquest the whole time i was writing this. it was unfitting as hell. lyric title from hozier's 'Arsonist's Lullabye' which SLAPS by the way

Ainsel took a sip of her whiskey, finding it burned down her throat, a fire she was familiar with. Fire was familiar to her, and so she sought it in alcohol, whenever she needed celebration. Whenever she needed to think. Whenever she needed to be cleansed.

At some point, however, thinking alone became out of the question, as Istus had decided to join her. And the conversation had shifted, like the wind, to the subject that seemed to be on the tip of Ainsel’s tongue whenever Istus so much as looked her direction. The subject of Istus’s godhood, and the subject of going back.

Ainsel hadn’t meant to piss her off, but she was often effortless in her malignance, she found.

“You can’t seriously tell me, Ainsel, that you don’t consider going back to whatever you were before all this. Before I roped you into this mess.” Istus spits out the phrase, the accusation, an uncharacteristic bitterness coloring her tone. Ainsel compared it to that of marmalade: it was a flavor of bittersweet she was not partial to.

But she considered Istus’s words, after processing her anger, after filing it away in her mind to perhaps feel defeated over later. She considered the words, chewed on them, and found a taste she found to be most wholesome as she formulated her response.

“I’m always thinking of going back,” Ainsel says after her pause, “But when Lot’s wife looked over her shoulder, she turned into a pillar of salt. And although pillars can hold things up, and salt is good for cleaning and keeping meat, it's a poor exchange for losing yourself, isn’t it? And you know what, Istus, people do go back. But they don’t survive, because two realities are claiming them at the same time.”

There was silence for a while. Istus seemed to be staring at the floor, and for a moment, Ainsel thought she saw her companion glance briefly back over her shoulder, before returning her gaze to the rickety old wood.

“But going forward, is that not also a poor exchange? How much can you change yourself before it becomes a form of murder? Until you’ve massacred yourself?”

“Well, to that I say this.” Ainsel raised her glass of fine whiskey, barely drained, as she liked to remain sober before Istus, lest she become vulnerable. “Would you rather be the dragon of ouroboros, consuming itself in a desperate attempt to return to a previous state, or would you rather be a phoenix? Endlessly dying, but being reborn as it moves forward? Perhaps sometimes yearning for its old form, yet happy in the new?”

Istus seemingly didn’t have anything to say to that line of logic. Instead she glanced down at her own glass of whiskey.

“I’ve always hated whiskey,” she muttered, seemingly to no one, but she said it loud enough for Ainsel to hear.

“Why?”

“I’ve always hated fire,” Istus continued, as if the two matters were connected, and they were. “I hated how it consumed, leaving nothing in its wake. I hated how one wrong move could destroy everything I had woven. I hated how it left destruction everywhere it touched.”

“And has that changed?”

Istus looks up from her floor, to her drink, and then to Ainsel. Ainsel never knew how to feel when she did that, when she looked her in the eye. She wasn’t sure how to interpret the skip in her heartbeat whenever it happened.

“You make it look so natural,” Istus sounded a bit like summer rain, her voice getting soft in a way that was unusual for her, but made sense. “You make fire look like it’s a part of you. The way you move it. The way it dances across your sword when you control it. You are one with it.”

“It.. well, I suppose it _is_ a part of me. It’s my blood that ignites it.”

“And isn’t there a wonderful symbolism in that?” Istus smiled for the first time since the conversation began, and Ainsel found herself staring. “Isn’t there a sort of meaning in how you must bleed to bring about destruction?”

Ainsel scowled, sipping her whiskey. It burned. “And now you compare me to the thing you hate?”

“Hated,” Istus sighed, but not in the way of exasperation, in the way of a lover who had seen her beau come back from sea. “I don’t think I can hate it anymore. Not when every time I see the roaring of a fire, all I think about is _you_.”


End file.
